Vol. 37 Issue 7
Nov 09, 2018
From the Editors
We check the news: Democrats win the House, Republicans win the Senate. All of this—the sleepless nights angry at the evening news, the realization that we are hooked, that we need more (maybe even convinced that the Democrats really have changed, this time)—for one increasingly meagre sentence. This endless cycle of political speculation only naturalizes what we cannot accept: that this means everything. It may now be impossible to separate life from national politics, but, if we learned anything on Tuesday, it’s that elections don’t make a life.
For many, however, this separation was never possible. A call to arms against voter suppression in Georgia, and the enfranchisement of over a million people with felonies in Florida, might feel like the slow realization of a democratic ideal, but these victories are as partial as they are necessary. Those whose lives have been the most politicized are also those for whom democracy has rarely occurred: refugees, the incarcerated, those whose gender identities might be written out of law. As Nancy Pelosi gleefully rushes to establish “a bipartisan marketplace of ideas” as if she’s ringing the Nasdaq bell, we might remind her that our votes are not a mandate for the same old world. They are, rather, a reckoning with what we should do with what this world has left in its wake, those lives made expendable in democracy’s name. Our votes are not a sign of freedom, but of responsibility. They are not a gift, but a debt.
– CP && WWArts
WHY AM I LONELY FOR LONESOME LOVE?
Emotion and spectacle in Mitski’s Be the Cowboy
I remember a particular moment from my first night on Brown's campus this September when my entire body was enveloped by …
Climate
Through the Muck
Introducing an Indy series on climate change in RI
We have no idea how to think about climate. Over-dramatized headlines responding to last month’s United Nations IPCC report yell at …
Ephemera
Features
No Student Left Behind
The road to cultural competency in CAPS and beyond
One phenomenon has seen steady rise on college campuses: the influx of international students, from an average of 600,000 in 2013 …
Literary
Three Poems
here we collide Worry me at the tail edge of torn seams, Locked into conversation with the neighbors again About the …
Metro
We Can't Live on Books Alone
The Fight for Graduate Worker Power
Brown University’s Graduate School recently bought two Facebook ads targeting their students’ unionization efforts, one titled “Do You Need a Union,” …
The People’s Council
Rachel Miller reimagines Providence politics
On the night of the 2018 Rhode Island primaries, Rachel Miller, a candidate for Providence’s Ward 13 City Council seat, had …
News
The Children Who Leave and the Burden They Carry
Professor, activist, and journalist Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj on her commitment to justice and fighting for Indigenous communities in Guatemala
content warning: state violence, racism “They leave because they want to break the curse that steals their dreams the moment they …
Beyond the Candidates
An independent midterms rundown
Here we thread together national stories, revealed not through House or Senate races, but through ballot measures and referendums, speaking to …
Week in Puppets
DANCE LIKE NOBODY'S WATCHING “This is interpretive dance—also known as Mooch Moves—for my time in the White House.” Last Monday, the …
Science & Technology
LEARNING FACES
The uncanny horror of deepfake videos
“Will ‘Deepfakes’ Disrupt the Midterm Election?” reads a recent headline from Wired. Two weeks ago, the New York Times published an …
Data Democracy
Big Data and the pitfalls of targeted campaigning
At a typical phone banking meeting, volunteers cluster around a table or two. They all go to the website that hosts …